From "What's Wrong With Teachers?" to "What's Wrong With Educational Research?": Reconsidering Teaching and How It Is Studied

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Positionality and Teaching

Abstract

This project considers how certain educational research positions teachers as problems to be managed or worked around. After considering this problem we attempt to reframe educational research in a way that recognizes the professional teachers’ key role in teaching and learning. Following a discussion about how the quest for generalization and objectivity are often pursued at the expense of relevance and how this is an unacceptable price to pay for scientific rigor in the realm of educational research, attempt to reconstruct some of the ways we think about teachers in schools of education. We specifically consider how research on teacher activism and participatory action research as a method can help to make educational research more relevant and hence, useful.

Authors

• Kurt Stemhagen, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Brionna Nomi, Virginia Commonwealth University